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If I bid on every firm in my target market that is coming to my school’s OCI, I will use up only half of the bids I’m allowed to have. I don’t want to waste the other bids, but frankly I’m not sure what to do with them.

With grades slightly above median, I don’t expect stellar results from OCI anyway, but I want to do what I can to improve my chances.

My CSO suggests bidding on neighboring states, but I have no ties to those markets and no plausible explanation for wanting to work there. I have zero interest in NYC.

I can’t imagine why a firm outside my target market would pick me over classmates who grew up there. It seems a waste of time to bid on areas where I have no connections. Yet it’s also a waste to let half of my bids go unused.

NY isn't just a place. It had over 2,300 summer associate positions last year, more than: MA, DC, IL, and TX combined. It's probably got 1/4-1/3 of all the summer associate positions in existence in the whole country.

In the sense that you would rather have no SA or job prospects than spend a summer in NY?

In the sense that I don't want a career in NYC. Not sure how that summer in NYC would lead to long-term prospects in my home market.

But maybe it would. Is this a common path?

Firms vastly prefer people with jobs to people without jobs. Doing a job hunt in your home market with an offer on the table from a NYC firm is going to be dramatically different from doing a job hunt having stuck out of 2L OCI. Worst case, you can suck it up, put in a couple of years in NYC, then lateral. In a lot of markets, e.g. Chicago, firms hire fewer people up front and take more on the lateral market. Your home town may be that way too.

rayiner wrote:Firms vastly prefer people with jobs to people without jobs.

This makes perfect sense. It's interesting that my CSO didn't even mention NYC when I raised this question. However, it sounds like NYC is a better strategy than bidding on neighboring states, because (a) NYC has more SA positions available, and (b) NYC cares less about ties. Right?

rayiner wrote:Firms vastly prefer people with jobs to people without jobs.

This makes perfect sense. It's interesting that my CSO didn't even mention NYC when I raised this question. However, it sounds like NYC is a better strategy than bidding on neighboring states, because (a) NYC has more SA positions available, and (b) NYC cares less about ties. Right?

Exactly. If you have open bid spots and any remote chance of getting an NY firm with them, it makes sense to use NY as a back-up plan. Your alternative appears to be basically wasting the bids. Seems like the right call to me.